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Looking in with my candle on my way to bed (I retire early these dark evenings) I see a fistful of thumbs gesturing disapproval at my earlier query. I wonder why. If the gesticulators intend a negative answer to my question of fact, may I ask them to look up “Liberty” on Wikipedia and also to google an article by Andrew Gilligan entitled “The 'right’ to sleep with children was one 'civil liberty’ that NCCL supported”?

As for Anon 4.29pm and those who express similar sentiments, the issue isn’t quite so clear-cut as they seem to think. It isn’t a simple matter of “individual” rights versus “state” wrongs. The individual depends ultimately upon the state, in its legislative and executive capacities, for the security of his rights. Any organization which pressurizes those arms of the state into an over-sensitive or exaggerated concern for the rights of the wicked and malevolent directly injures the innocent.

Hence the applicability of my seemingly irrelevant question. If Liberty had had its way back in the Seventies, Jimmy Savile and his kind would have gone to their graves in the full odour of sanctity and their hapless victims would have cried for redress in vain. Do the cohort of the Anons regard that prospect with complacency?

Good night.